It’s certainly taken a fair bit of time — five months, to be exact — but Blizzard‘s space warfare RTS Starcraft II has finally gotten a proper demo.

That’s not to say you haven’t been able to try Starcraft II for free before, but to do so was a bit convoluted. You basically needed to get someone to send you a “guest pass” out of their own limited allowance, received when they purchased either Starcraft II or World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at retail.

The problem with the guest pass system wasn’t just the finite amount available, but the fact that it required you to already have a Battle.net account, which necessitated playing online. It was also only good for a limited amount of time… you couldn’t play the guest pass version indefinitely.

The new demo removes both restrictions: not only do you not need a Battle.net account anymore, meaning you can try Starcraft II without an internet connection, but you can also play the demo for as long as you want.

Not that theres an unlimited amount of content, of course: you’ll only be able to play the first three missions of the game, as well as solo skirmish mode, of which only the “Terran vs. Terran” mode is available.